The most annoying part was the rather opaque period between launching, approving, and actually running the ad. The first real confirmation I had that things were working was a bill.
Maybe a simple user forum site doesn't need to make mega valuation levels of money. Maybe it, and other low effort sites like Facecrook and Twatter, should be run as public benefit corps. These companies aren't selling state of the art tech here - why do they need to be such money makers??
You’re thinking of the user facing element as being the thing they’re selling. That’s not what they’re selling. They give that away for free so they can sell extremely sophisticated data and targeting. You’re the product they’re selling. And the access is definitely cutting edge.
Because that's capitalism. Investors want "growth".
I looked to advertise on Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit.
Facebook didn't seem interested in SMBs and I didn't even advertise on them, it seemed very complex just to run a simple ad.
Twitter didn't deliver good value per click etc., but I did get good demographic information on who was and wasn't interested.
Google was the best value, especially if you look for bargains where one group of customers is cheap.
Reddit had no offerings in the way Google had, or even Twitter had. IIRC I bailed on advertising with them at all. With Facebook it was just too complex for a simple ad, with Reddit it didn't even seem they were offering anything near what I wanted.
This leads me to wonder if the stock market goes down and VC dries up how long will Reddit be around?
I literally couldnt give them my money. I wanted to target a specific subreddit, but couldnt buy any impressions on it for 3 months. The app kept forcing me to advertise on /all, or all technology reddits, which wasnt what I wanted. I did buy $10 of ads, got zero clicks, surprise surprise.
The thing was hard to setup, hard to run, hard to measure, not to mention, advertisers get treated like any other account. I was shadow banned because I was linking to one domain, and reddit considered me a spammer. But I was like, that *is* the whole purpose of advertising. I was forced to post a few cat pictures, just so I could run my ads.
Never again.
I note they have since revamped their ad site-- now there is a new site, but you have to reregister to run ads, and I dont want the hassle.
Yes, everyone hates ads, but thats how free sites make money.
Some redditors were hostile to ads, but the number isnt that big. Most users were indifferent.
Such an ad-hostile company, I wonder how they make money.